Sentiments expressed in tweets on Twitter can be used to assess in real-time where supply chain shortages caused by pandemics, wars or natural disasters are causing food, say researchers at Penn State University and Hamad bin Khalifa University in Qatar shortage. They found that food security-related tweets expressing anger, disgust or fear in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic were strongly associated with actual food shortages in some U.S. states. The findings may be used to develop low-cost early warning systems to identify where food security interventions are most needed, the researchers said. Stephan Goetz, professor of agriculture and regional economics at Penn State and director of the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development (NERCRD), said: “The COVID-19 outbreak and associated supply chain disruptions have raised global concerns about food access and supply, with many Such concerns have been expressed in the media.” “We wanted to see if we could identify specific states and territories facing food supply or insecurity issues in real time through tweets.” Goetz said he and his colleagues didn’t want to look only at food insecurity of tweets, but wanted to know how people actually felt about the state of food. They used artificial intelligence to identify the emotions expressed in tweets, which allowed them to distinguish tweets expressing concern about food availability from tweets expressing relief or contentment.
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